New ideas in glass transitions

Abstract

In this talk I will review some of the recent applications of the replica theory to glasses. I will firstly describe the basic assumptions and I will show that they can be considered as a precise reformulations of old ideas. The relation of this approach with the mode-coupling theory will be shortly discussed. I will present numerical simulations for binary mixtures. The results of these simulations point toward the correctness of the replica approach to glasses. I will describe the results of off-equilibrium simulations for large systems, in which the aging dynamics is studied.

Proceedings of International workshop on The Morphology and Kinetics of Phase Separating Complex Fluids, held in the University of Messina (Italy) from June 24 to 28, 1997. 10 pages, 5 figures (eps)>